Critter Geek

One of the things I’ve done as a Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) volunteer is called “telemetry”. The telemetry team studies raptor migration in an attempt to learn what the birds are doing. (I’ve written more about telemetry here.) Red-tailed hawks in particular are a interesting because some of them stay in our area all year. Some migrate from further north to further south. And others might be migrating from the north into our area for the winter. We don’t really know. Telemetry volunteers seek to answer that question by packing our all gear, then all of GGRO’s gear (or so it seems), into some poor sap’s SUV, and then follow the a Red-tailed Hawk with a tiny transmitter glued to its tail. Actually it requires three SUV’s — one for the chase team, who stays close to the bird, and two for the teams who are triangulating signals from further afield.

Like any part of GGRO, telemetry has it’s own superstitions and legends. This is one legend as it was told to me.

The telemetry team was tracking a large Red-tailed Hawk during the fall migration season. They assumed that the hawk was female because it was on one of the heavier birds ever banded (female hawks are usually quite a bit larger than male hawks, but this one was at the upper limit even for females).

The bird meandered around Marin county until it seemed to stop in a residential area. There the bird stayed, for over a day. The three telemetry teams stayed in position, triangulating and ready to follow the radio signal as soon as the bird decided to move, hopefully to migrate. (There is nothing better for a telemetrist than a bird that’s bent on migrating. To Mexico we go!)

But this bird stayed. To the point where the chase team decided that they’d better go knock on the door of the house they were parked across from, and explain why they had been sitting there with antennae and binoculars for a couple of days.

So they knocked on the door of the house, and a woman answered. They explained they were tracking a hawk that had been hanging out in her yard, and she pointed to the bird and said, “That hawk?”

Yes, that hawk. The woman looked at the telemetrists, with their badges and binoculars and antennae and receivers and gear, laughed, and told them that that bird lived here almost all the time, and that it hung around because they fed it regularly, right out here on the deck.

The telemetrists were incredulous. They’d never heard of such a thing. “So what do you feed it?” The answer came quick, “Chicken mostly.”

Clearly they didn’t believe her. So the woman of the house invited them in…”Here, I’ll show you.” She grabbed some chicken out of the freezer, tossed it in the microwave, and pressed the defrost button.

After an uncomfortable wait, the microwave dinged. At that signal, the well-fed Red-tailed swooped down and perched on the deck, and the woman opened the door and threw the chicken out. Incredulous telemetrists watched while the bird grabbed the chicken and hauled it to a tree and began eating.

And so the we have the legend of the chicken-fed Red-tailed hawk.

Recently I found the official story as it was recorded, but I haven’t let myself read it yet. I wanted to write the story here as I had heard first.

Photo by Steve Jurvetson. Thanks for using Creative Commons!